Do NOT use Magento for your Ecommerce site

You guys must have gotten lucky then because I've installed around 7 extensions, and each one had a problem with another one. I've paid to fix issues 7 different times.

Everyone makes valid points. The key is finding the proper solution for your store. What I have discovered about Magento, is you have two groups of people that love it. Those that run multiple stores (Hayneedles of the world) with full time staff and lots of budget and programmers/engineers. It is an extremely powerful solution that is overkill for 95% of the stores out there. But like others said, you need good hardware, I wouldn't even suggest VPS but dedicated servers, at the very least one but most likely you will need many.

At the same time I have found OpenCart and Prestashop will do 99% of what Magento will do with less resources and a more involved community base. I need to look at the multistore option for Prestashop because its the one thing my current client was turned off of since we couldn't find documentation on it.

I have another client who is on Zen Cart and loves it but, Zen Cart sites are very dated looking and work more on table layouts. They don't look as modern and I found OS Commerce to be about the same way.

Most people starting out are better off on Hosted solutions unless you really need it do to specific things. Shopify is good in very specific circumstances but I really like the customer support and ease of use of BigCommerce. If you like BigCommerce and want to either run Multistore or subscription tpe businesses, then Americommerce is the first one to look at, and Volusion second. My only worry with Volusion is they have been having tons of down time over the last couple months.

PCI-DSS compliance is a huge deal and most of the hosted carts are level 1 compliant. The last thing you want is to have to notify customers of a security breach and get sued for it. They also have shared SSL so that is one less worry you have to look at.

Now I am gonna say something that will piss off all the developers and coders out there but I have to say it. If you do not have a ton of PHP and javascript knowledge, stay away from Magento. It is not designed for you.

But that is not a bad thing. You don't need an 18 wheeler when your pick up truck (or pick up truck with a trailer) will do just fine and be able to turn faster and have the same if not more luxury. If you are the next hayneedle. build.com, walmart.com or large site, then yes, you need Magento and get ready to pay for it.

BTW, I am gonna disagree with RGB, custom is never the way to go. Just about every "custom" site still sits on top of an opensource shopping cart program. From a PCI compliance, usability and flexibility, it doesn't make sense. Now, a programmer is gonna disagree since once your "custom" site is done you are stuck with the programmer that worked on it. If you know any programmers at PayPal, ask them which database they will never touch. They have one database over there that is so convoluted they are scared to touch it for fear of breaking the whole system. That is what you get with custom.

Play around with Opencart and Prestashop (PHP Carts). I have also heard great things about Spree Commerce that is done in Ruby, same programming language as shopify.

Again more nonsense.....

Any complex software takes time to learn. It's amazing that some people don't want to invest the time to learn something and then claim "it sucks" or "its made to break".

Just consider the source.

Hi york,

That is exactly what I thought the first time I tried modifying Magento. Like you I thought it needlessly complex and that it must have been done that way to encourage the purchase of the Enterprise edition. However, after finding the documentation, and reading it, I realized that they have a perfectly good reason for their relatively complex framework.

The primary reason for the complex directory structure of the Magento framework is clearly laid out in the documentation. It is all about making the application robust. If certain files are damaged, or missing then the system falls back to a default framework, and if that fails it falls back to a base framework set of files.

One of the benefits of the Magento framework is that a programmer that knows what he is doing can customize using a minimal set of custom files, This framework also allows for upgrades to be implemented with less chance of incompatibility with your customization, provided you follow the guidelines for the framework.

The problem comes in when people try to hack in changes without following the guidelines for the framework. Those hacks are what causes people problem. It is important that you use a programmer that is very familiar with the Magento framework and not someone who is merely familiar with PHP.


The bottom line is that you have got to learn and follow the Magento Framework to avoid unnecessary problems and issues. From my experience most people can't be bothered to do that and that is why they have issues with Magento.

For anyone interested you will find user and developer guides for Magento here: Magento Users Guide | Magento

I am not sure why you would call it a scam, as it is the business model used by nearly every "open source" eCommerce solution. Unless you are a programmer, there is nothing free in any open source eCommerce solution, they all make money from extensions and customization. In fact many of the non open source solutions end up being cheaper than any open source solution. This is the usual and customary business model for open source software.

Business models for open-source software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I dont know much about paid solutions, I like owning the solution, and not having to pay monthly fees, and for the open source carts you can get an account at bluehost.com and use simple scripts, free with a bluehost account, to do a one-click install of several open source solutions, including opencart, prestashop, and several others, you can test them, and delete them and get a different one if you decide.

I prefer carts that load pages very quickly, because if the site is just the slightest bit slow you just lost a sale.

You could research to find out what carts load pages the fastest, and you always want to make sure the cart has a solid product import function.

It seems there is a product import module for opencart that costs 135.

If you are dropshipping you will need your supplier to have product data feeds that reflect the inventory levels they have on a daily basis, so that you never end up selling a product that is out of stock or where the supplier changed the price. Drop Ship Manager will keep your product data feeds automatically updated with these changes, then you just import that product data feed into your shopping cart software.

Opencart also has a multiple stores feature, where all the stores are controlled by one admin panel, and the total import pro seems to be able to import to multiple stores, and you can use Drop Ship Manager to keep your product data up to date for each multi store, as many multiple stores as you want actually.

Prestashop also has multiple stores, but not sure if that feature is working perfectly as of version 1.5.3.

You want multiple stores so that you can have as many drop ship suppliers as you want, each in a different store. That way your aren't stuck with just one supplier and you can make much more money.

Hope this helps!

Hi york,

That's one way to go if it suits you. :rolleyes:

I know people that say "why pay for an expensive car, when walking is free?" Or "why pay all that money for a home, when camping is free?". "Why pay for groceries when you can find all you need to eat in the dumpster?" :confused:

I guess if your goal is to live off the land like a savage, then free living is the way to go. However some of us may want to build a real business, and you don't see too many fast growing businesses that try to manage on the absolute cheapest way to go.

Some people focus on making money, rather than on never spending much. I'm in that camp that is happy to spend a million dollars if it is the surest way to make 2 million in profit.

Different strokes for different folks.

No reason we cannot both contribute to this thread.

I will let you speak for the people that are focused on spending little and investing next to nothing on their business, your advice seems to fit that approach and I sure it will appeal to many on this forum.

I will try to contribute a little to the crowd that wants to grow business fast and to invest in the best tools to maximize profit. This way both camps will be served by our different approaches. Each Warrior can decide which approach is better for their own personal agenda.

Very interesting -

forgotten that ebay is powered by Magento and Yahoo! is a partner. It seems like you had the free edition for having under 50K SKU over there and l already know why you're site when slow and because of the load timing which means you need to start combing the lines =D

I have my own company with 15+ developers in Magento platform and all my customers have not had an issue and even paid for such ext. as you did (lol). Need help combing you're lines or a new platform; inbox me.

Hmmm, personally I would hang with free solutions but that is just me, Prestashop and OpenCart, these carts will likely need small configuration changes and some cut and paste in the code, though I dont mind configuring and doing these small changes.

But if you must have convenience, then you will obviously need a paid solution.

I would recommend Americommerce since it has multiple stores, and so you can run a lot of different suppliers through it at once, all with a different store front, and you will definitely want this in the future when you want to grow further.

I mean the platinum package of Americommerce is 300/mo for unlimited products across multi-stores seems like a good deal because just think of all the business you can do with that.

Of course, you will want to run Drop Ship Manager to synchronize to your dropshippers inventory levels across all your store fronts.

Hope this helps!

A word of advice, get the feeds if you can, if not, switch dropshippers, here is a list of drop shippers that have feeds.

You might try:

SAFTEY TECHNOLOGY SECURITY PRODUCTS

DROP SHIPPERS WITH PRODUCT FEEDS LIST

This is complete mis-information and propaganda from corporations like big commerce to try to scare people into using their monthly payment carts, this is a typical tactic of corporations lobbying to try to stop better lower costs choices, as usual.

From the Prestashop website:

"Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DDS) compliance is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. They are designed to ensure that an e-commerce solution has been designed to safely accept and store credit card information. PrestaShop is PCI compliant Ready and up to all standards and regulations."

PCI compliance is only concerned with the payment modules, that they are secure, ie. the payment module must use ssl, and credit card numbers must not be stored on the site. Also, the payment module must follow safe coding guidelines, and yes all open source carts of high caliber like prestashop and opencart are PCI compliant.

Tell me, why would a company go through all the trouble of building an ecommerce platform, if no one would use it because it can't be PCI compliant?

Hope this helps!